Grey
by Mireekian
Summary: It is all you can see; blinding, blurring, encompassing grey. Grey, like your eyes. Grey, like your heart. You wonder if you have a heart. Your world and your life passes by. ...You begin to wonder if you are, indeed, alive.
1. Prologue

Prologue

Prologue

It's a world of grey. The food is dust on your tongue. The wind whips and you only feel the stinging cold. There is no colour. There is only shades of grey – terrible, seeping, tainted shades of grey. Lying in wait so innocently… they wait until you don't expect it and they reach out and grasp their hold on you, so tightly; so cold. You feel as if you cannot breathe; that everything is too much. You can't stand it – it's a whirlwind, everything's blurring and insane and it's coming to get you, but the grey is so encompassing and you cannot get away.

You want to scream, but noise is drowned out.

It is drowned out by grey.

The war is over – it has been over for a summer. Two months so filled with funerals and sorrow. You've heard about the celebrations, about the inauguration of Kingsley Shacklebolt as the new Minister. You've heard about the Order of Merlins being distributed. You've heard about countless ceremonies being held in honor of Harry Potter, of Hermione Granger, of Ron Weasley, of Neville Longbottom – yes, even Neville Longbottom. The Ministry is settling down. So is Azkaban. And Hogwarts is being rebuilt. It should be ready in a week for you to go back.

You wonder if you're actually going to go back.

You wonder if there's even a point.

Father would not care much. On your weaker days, you wonder if the Kiss had redeemed him in any way. It probably hadn't, you know that so easily. But you wonder if maybe that sacrifice – the sacrifice your father has ever made on behalf of you, to protect you – was even worth it. Your Mother didn't care much. You know she blames you – you blame you, so it is only right for the others to see where the blame falls. You were too weak, you've always been too weak (quidditch, grades, Voldemort) in everything you've always done.

You're nothing more than a failure.

A failure that can't see the truth until it's too late.

Until the truth is lost in grey.

And now your family name is in ruin, your family trust is dried up, your father is dead to the world; he accepted the agreement – instead of both you and him having to suffer life sentences rotting in Azkaban, he took the Kiss and cleared your name – and now mother is dead to the world, but in a different way. Firewhiskey is good to drown in. Almost as frightening as grey.

Grey.

Grey like your eyes, like your hair, like the ring on your finger.

Like your heart.

Your heart is a very dark shade of grey. Very, very dark.

You wonder if you even have a heart.

You know you don't have your wand. It would have been so easy, had you had your wand. You could have gone into that trial room and confessed everything – everything you'd ever done. If you'd had your wand. But you didn't – Potter still had it. So you were frightened; terrified. You went into that trial and you lied. You lied, and you lied, and you lied some more.

Potter and Granger and Weasley scoffed behind your back. They knew you were lying. Their glares burned holes in your back. You felt small – small like a speck of dust in a cloud. Clouds are grey. You are grey too.

It was Mother's turn. You weren't in the witness stands. They herded you back out the door, where you sat on a hard, stone bench. The stone was grey. It was freezing, and the cold seeped into your bones.

Father was sitting on the bench across from you. He stared at you the whole time, but you never once looked back up at him. You were too afraid, too scared. You didn't have your wand. Potter still had your wand.

Mother came back out, and she was crying. She did not see you sitting there. You wonder how she could have missed you, but you did not wonder for long. She went straight to Father, hugged him fiercely and tight. She told him what you had done – that you had lied. The Wizengamot must have told her what you'd said. Father told her to hush. He said he'd take care of it, that he'd take care of the family. And then they looked at you, and you looked at the ground, too ashamed to look up and you feared you'd just fucked everything up further. Then father walked in to the courtroom, and you've never seen him since.

And you knew, so easily, by the way Mother went straight to the door and sobbed, that you had fucked up. You'd failed again, and nothing would ever change. You've always been the failure, the coward, the pussy.

You've always been: Draco Malfoy, the Grey.

And you wish you'd never been at all.


	2. Chapter One

Chapter One

Chapter One

They didn't take much notice when you arrived. Nothing really changed. The world would have gone on the same way it always had if you hadn't shown up today. It wouldn't have been the same had Potter not come. Or even Granger – or Longbottom. They were all heroes. The Wizarding World parted and bowed before heroes. The failures, the cowards – the greys; well, they could jump off a cliff and no one would care.

You doubt they'd even notice.

Now, you walk through halls of stone, of grey stone, and everything around you is blurred. You can't make anything out. You just follow the flow of other people, even though you don't really have to; your feet know the way. Your feet know the way to every corner of this castle – it has been your home for the last seventeen years. For two of those years, it was like hell; not home. But the meanings of those words have always confused you.

You follow your feet and they bring you to a barren table. Not many of your peers have decided to go to school this year – many of them were dead. More of them were too ashamed. You know shame – you live it every day. You guess this is the reason why you are here. Shame is your life, no matter where you go. Besides, you are a failure, a coward. No one will care what you do, unless you step out of line. Then grey will fade to black, and the images in the black are not very nice at all. So you make sure to stay grey.

The strong, proud lioness of Gryffindor stands tall at the front of the hall, her hat pointed and rigid; so perfect. The Headmistress this year is McGonagall; the proper head of Hogwarts. She moves to make sounds, but you don't hear anything. You haven't heard anything, not since the last words of your father echoed through your head. Her welcome speech drifts past you, through you. You do not hear a word. You can not distinguish the tears on your classmates' faces as she makes her speech, but you know they are crying. You can remember the last time you cried. You felt shame then, so acutely, and now, as the others around you stand and applaud, crying all the while, you wonder if you should feel shame for not listening. But it is not your fault – the words are drowned in grey.

You feel glares on your back for not applauding, but you do not know why. You couldn't hear anything. It wasn't your fault.

But it is always your fault, isn't it? You are the failure, the coward. It is your fault Dumbledore is dead. It is your fault Snape is dead. It is your fault your father is nothing but a shell, empty and soulless. It is your fault your mother is a shell, sorrowful and intoxicated. All of it. All of the past two years has been your fault. It is your fault, too, then. This newest failure is your fault and yours alone. The blame rests solely on you.

The realization shifts into focus, and quickly shifts out again. It is grey, and so is everything else. Your thoughts are so easily lost, these days. It is hard to pick out a single thought from a cesspool of grey. They are indistinguishable.

There is food in front of you. Students you hadn't noticed before are sitting at your table – all of them young. The new additions to Slytherin. The futures of the Wizarding World. You turn your head to your plate, and pick up your grey spoon. You delicately cut into your Sheppard's pie, and bring it smoothly up to your lips. You take a small bite and lower your eyes as you chew. The food is ash in your mouth, tasteless and colorless and grey. You put down the spoon and push around the food left on your plate. You do not take another bite for the rest of the meal. You do not want to taste the grey.

You get up to move as everyone else prepares to leave. Instead of going right away, you wait until the hall is nearly empty. You would not want your grey to touch and taint the others. Even Potter. Especially Potter.

No one is in sight as you leave the Great Hall and make your way down to the dungeons. The stones – some new from the reconstruction, some old with wear – blur past in a montage of grey. You take in nothing as you allow your feet to carry you down. Your feet know the way, even if you have forgotten.

Suddenly, you're pitched off your feet by a spell from behind, and everything rushes into focus. You roll on the rough, grey stones, coming to a stop only when you hit a wall. Voices are carrying around you, loud and laughing. The sound, though so clear, is muted to your ears, which are so used to not listening. Somehow, though you cannot hear them speak, their message gets across.

They believe you to be pathetic. You were mocking McGonagall at the feast at dinner. They heard you'd gotten off from punishment from the ministry. It wasn't right. You are the coward. You don't deserve to be let off.

You pull yourself up onto one arm, to see your attackers. You cannot hear, so you cannot recognize them. Their faces are blurred to you.

There is a muted cry of rage, and a punch to your face sends you smashing to the ground. It is all you can do as the others join in – punching, kicking, scratching, a few hexes here and there – to curl up and try to ignore it. But it is no use, and you can feel the blood – your blood – begin to pool around you. Your skin is broken, and crimson life is flowing freely from your body. They do not stop there, however. They continue ripping, shredding, tearing. Beating, railing, smashing. Of course, you remember now. You failed again, at dinner this time. You were not listening. Your attackers are right; you do deserve this. You deserve all of this.

If there is one thing in the grey besides shame and cold that you can still feel, it is pain. This is something you cannot escape. Pain haunts your every step; haunts your every thought. The shame is so ingrained it is bearable – you've lived with it for so long you cannot remember what it is like without it. The cold is seeped in your blood and in your bones. Like shame, it is easily accepted. But pain – pain is different. It flares up so suddenly and so scathingly that it lasts and lasts and lasts, and it never dulls. It can only grow. It can't be ignored.

Grey begins to fade, and only now do you begin to fear. Black is worse than grey. Black is worse than shame, worse than cold, worse than pain. Black means terror and horror, and black is something that has to be avoided. There is no question.

You curl in on yourself, but the torment keeps coming, just as quickly as the black. You feel its tainted, cold hands slither up your fingers, gradually gaining ground. Only now do you think to call for help – use a voice that hasn't been spoken for longer than your ears haven't been listening – but you realize quickly that it would be impossible. No one would hear you – you are grey. You could drop off a cliff and no one would care. No one would even notice.

"Stop!"

It is like a shot in the dark. A bolt of lightning through the night sky. It shocks you from your very core, shocks you so much that you double your efforts to break through the encroaching black, if only to see whom the first voice you've truly heard in months belongs to. But you would need to prop up your head, and you have no energy left for such a thing. You drop back onto the stone ground, and are hopeless and the black begins to encroach again.

You are aware, dimly, that the assaults have stopped raining down on you. It does not stop the pain from existing, but it does stop it from growing.

"What do you think you're doing?"

The voice must truly belong to an angel. You can not decipher the words, for they are still grey, but you can hear that they are soft and gentle beneath layers of determination and steel.

Steel is grey, you think. But you highly doubt that she exists in shades of monotonous grey. Her voice carries many tones, and many colours. Her life cannot be grey.

The shadows of your attackers diminish, and it is Hermione Granger that kneels at your side. She does not pay any attention to the blood she is kneeling in; instead her hands are deft as they turn your face and cradle your head.

"For all your talk, Malfoy," she mutters sardonically, "You certainly aren't being very careful with that precious pure blood of yours."

It makes sense to you, finally, why she is a hero of the Wizarding World.

"Come on," she says, and her words are fire – whirlwind of flames and red and gold and life – so bright they blind him, scaring away the black – the shadows cannot get him now, not now, never now – and it is all because of her, and her words and her life.

She is a hero, and it is not because she is gentle or compassionate or brilliant.

"Let's get you cleaned up."

It is because she is gold.


	3. Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

And it is so strange, you think, that he should be standing in front of you like that. His eyes stare out over the grounds, and you wish you could see from his view – once, just once. You look around and the shame burns inside you, so powerful and so raging and so obscure. It hurts, it hurts so much. You cannot bear to look around any more, and your eyes land on him again.

"Hermione told me what happened, Malfoy."

The words are not spat at you, nor are they bitter or hurtful, and in a way, that makes them all the more painful. You try not to wince but fear you've failed; luckily Potter is just turning towards you as this happens, and so he does not see. You break your gaze, bringing it down to the stone ground. You don't deserve to watch him, just as you didn't deserve having the Gold girl save you.

He steps towards you and you back away. You cannot stand him staring at you, watching you with something not quite anger and definitely too close to pity. His gaze cuts through you, just as his spell did over a year before.

You feel his expression harden at your action, and you fear you've made a mistake. You open your mouth to do something, to say something that might possibly justify you, but nothing comes out. Just like the night before, you can't say anything. There is no point speaking if your voice is simply going to slip away.

Potter continues, deciding to ignore you. "I'm sorry that had to happen. I guess, with your wand, you might have been able to fight them off."

The grey is threatening to encompass everything, now – even the striking green of his eyes. It bubbles up in you, overflowing through your eyes – through every breath. It's pooling on the stones of the Astronomy Tower, snaking its way along the ground to an unsuspecting Potter. You see him hold his hand out, and your wand – your wand! – is sitting there. He offers it to you without anything else to say, and it's all you can do to drag your gaze away from those terrible, grey shadows on the ground for one brief second to stare at it.

"Here you are. Don't make me regret this."

It's your wand.

Your Wand.

You barely believe it. With this, everything will be right again. You can bring back your mother from her wasted hell. You can bring back your father from emptiness. Everything you've ever screwed up, you can fix – with just that one wand. You think of the trial, how you could have saved your father from the Kiss had you just been brave enough to tell the truth. And your wand, your wand – it can give you that courage. You will never have to be a failure again.

The grey all around you seems a little lighter, even as it snakes ever closer towards Potter. You take notice of it, of the shadows on the ground, and suddenly you fear. Should Potter become grey, what would happen to their world? There would be no one but the Gold girl to give colour back to people like you.

But your lust for your wand, to connect to the person you once were, is too great. You take three quick, hesitant steps towards Potter and his outstretched hand (three steps you took once before, on that fateful, storm-lit June night), and scarcely believing it to be true, snatch your wand, your bravery, your future. And then you turn and run.

It should be Snape, sitting there, glaring over the top of a stack of failed essays to a class so far beneath his worth they would not even be suited for him to walk on. Instead, it is Slughorn's beady eyes that stare so deviously, so darkly over a cauldron already smoking thick, dark grey plumes into the air. His gaze cuts through you, even as it praises and celebrates some others. He remembers you, of course. He remembers you to be the boy that failed… the first Slytherin, perhaps – besides Him and your parents – to see through your façade.

Your insides twist.

No.

Snape saw it first, and yet he only ever tried to help. You're so pathetic.

He was only trying to help, for Merlin's sakes!

You're such a pathetic fuck-up.

You clench your wand for strength; instead, it is only cold and unfeeling. Like the stone beneath your feet. Like you.

Slughorn is speaking, addressing the class as a whole. His words slip through you, and you stare sightlessly ahead, slightly downwards. Don't meet gazes. Don't cause disturbances. Don't fall into the black.

You close your eyes, and realize only after that it is a bad idea. With your wand, the grey haze had been lessening. You could see Potter's green eyes, and stark scar. You could see Weasley's bright red hair and freckles. You could see the shiny bush of a hairstyle that belonged solely to the Gold Girl. But even with your wand clasped tight in your fist, there is no shelter from the recesses of your mind.

You see Muggles, high in the air as tents burn all around you, and you hear the people's frantic, terrified yells. You see, years later, a close mockery of that same sight, on a woman you'd known since you were eleven. She twirls, so cold, so dead, in the air, hung by her ankles and bound. She is twirling, spinning, around and around in dim light, and nothing you hear can drag your gaze away until He calls your name, so foreign and terrifying.

_Draco Malfoy…_

_Malfoy, Draco Malfoy…_

_Draco…_

_Malfoy…_

_Malfoy._

"Mr. Malfoy, I do not tolerate such defiance and blatant disregard in my class. Now don't think you can ferret your way out of punishment this time, Mr. Malfoy, because you will find I am not as merciful as the Wizengamot have come to be. You truly are a disgrace to the name of Black… honestly, honestly, your mother would be so ashamed, so dreadfully ashamed…"

You jerk in your seat, eyes suddenly wide and alert. Everything's in such focus it hurts your eyes. There is no grey, nothing, to bar the harshness of those words, and you feel anger, sharp and seething, spark deep within you. Your wand is clasped again in your hand, and now nothing is standing in your way. All it will take is a few words to show that you may have failed, but you are still strong, so strong, and Slughorn is waiting for you to do just that and who are you to disappoint? All that is needed is for you to stand up, take out your wand and act and do and say –

"_Expelliarmus!"_

"_Draco, Draco, you are not a killer."_

"…_I have no wand at the moment… I cannot defend myself."_

_Sliding, sliding, inch by inch, weaker and weaker, struggling so futilely to remain upright…_

"_No, Draco. It is my mercy, not yours, that matters now."_

"_Avada Kedavra!"_

You cast down your eyes to the grey, dirty ground. You can't. You can't.

You drop your wand.

You feel the victory that is undoubtedly shining in Slughorn's eyes, even as he turns away and stalks to the other side of the classroom. You feel the smug glares and sniggers of your classmates, like each and every one is a lash on your skin. It burns, so acutely, so broadly. The Golden Trio is in this class with you, and you realize now what their actions had truly been up until that point.

She only saved you to laugh. She'd punched you before, and now she showed she was powerful enough to stop the punches. She held more control over you than even He had. And Potter knew you were no threat – he proved so by giving back your wand. He proved you to be worthless, pathetic, a failure – a coward. Weasley hasn't even deigned you worthy enough to insult. You're pathetic. You're nothing.

You bring your gaze back up from the ground, and you are not surprised at what you see. Everything is grey again. Even the Gold Girl, the Green Eyes and the Red Boy are nothing more that shadowy blurs to your vision. Sound is once again muted. You never got the chance, you muse, to taste real food once more. But you know, like it is so obvious, that anything brought to your lips will taste of ash, will be ash on your tongue. Distantly, you pull out your textbook and pretend to read.

Your wand lies cold and unfeeling on the dirty stone floor.


	4. Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

You're sitting in the Great Hall again, but hardly notice the hustle and bustle of dinner as it winds around you. The light-hearted chatter is just a roar in your ears, something you can tune out and pretend isn't even there. You feel the weight of glare on your back, but by now you are used to them and pay them no mind. You just sit there, staring at the piles of ash on your plate, that you piled on just for appearance's sake. Some Slytherin traits, you suppose, you can never shake.

McGonagall hates you even more this year – or perhaps, at least, she is free to show her hatred this year, as opposed to when you were still protected by Snape. You have four detentions so far, which is less than you had expected. You don't know why you have them; only that you do. You weren't listening to her during Transfiguration. Maybe the detentions were because of just that.

It's cold. You're cold.

You stand up to leave and feel the weight of the glares increase. Slowly, you move away from the table, disentangling your legs hesitantly. Once you are free, you walk briskly down the isle between Slytherin and Ravenclaw and exit quietly through the doors. Pillars of light are shining down from open windows high, high above you, and you think maybe that you'll take a walk around the lake. You haven't in a long, long time. Even if it is grey, you hope the water will shimmer.

It's sunny, but you don't really take it in. Instead you tuck your hands in your sleeves, lower your head. The wind is a breeze, but it cuts through you like ice. Frozen, dull ice. Trees are blowing, branches groaning, but the movement doesn't catch your eye. Like everything else, nature is just a blur, something that simply fades away from you. Like colour, like sound, like taste, like warmth. Like compassion.

You duck your head farther, until your chin hits your chest. All you watch is your feet, stepping hesitantly onwards. Any step you take might fail you, like everything else you've ever done. You might slip, fall, rush until you're nothing more to you but the grey swirling in your vision.

You watch, horrified, as one of your feet trip the other, and like you imagined, you fall to the ground, rolling down the incline – and the grey is swirling, lurching, tempting, reaching out with twisted limbs to grab at you, pull you tighter into its hold. You stop and gasp with shock. The water of the lake is cold and grey and – dull. It aches you where you've fallen in, up to your hips as you lie on your back. You shiver, drawing your arms close to cover your chest as you shake.

They're back. They kick your chin up, demanding that you look at them. Trying, you feel yourself willing your vision to focus, willing the grey to stop swirling as it does, rocking you and dizzying you. It doesn't work. You've failed again.

A kick lands on your side; you gasp with pain. They're yelling things at you, screaming angry, hateful things. You try to nod, try to tell them they're right to do so, that you deserve it, that you're a failure, because sometimes that's worked in the past and made things a little bit easier to handle. But you can't get anything through your mouth, can't make your lips form the words. They kick you again in your side, in the same spot, and all you can do is hide your face, hide yourself. Hide, like a coward – but that's all you've ever been. Just a coward and a failure.

Someone grabs your robe, bunching it around your neck. They drag you up, until they are breathing on your face. They say something meaningful. For once, you understand.

"Same time tomorrow, Death Eater. And the day after that, and the day after that – until we're sure you've learned your lesson. Or else we'll come find you, and you'll wish you'd never been born."

You want to tell them you already do, but they've thrown you back, splashing into the water. You go all the way under and you're panicking until you figure out which way is up and break through the surface, spluttering and shivering. You lie on your back in the water, floating and feeling the grey sloshing around your face, dragging heavily on your body.

Their harsh laughter rings in your head as you float there.

Not even for a moment do you consider defying them.

The first detention is that very night. You arrive exactly at 7:00pm, exactly when detention starts. Even she hasn't arrived yet, but as you walk in, your hair still damp even though you've changed your clothes, you see that she has left you instructions on the blackboard. She wants you to record the glossary of the first year textbook five times. Quickly you settle into the last desk in the last row, the farthest corner. You take out a quill and parchment, setting them up perfectly. It is a job, a job you deserved from being wrong, and you don't want to make her mad. If she gives you more detentions, you might not be able to meet with Them, and they swore they'd hunt you down if you fucked up again.

McGonagall arrives an hour or so later, and you are still working on the first copy of the glossary. You keep your eyes down on your paper as you write, not wanting her to punish you for not doing the work. You sense her stop to look around the classroom after she first walks in, and you can feel her getting annoyed. Your heart is beginning to pound with fear because you don't know why she is angry. Then her gaze lands on you, in the shadowy far corner, and you see her nod tersely out of the corner of your eye.

You breathe. You didn't even realize you had been holding your breath.

She sits at her desk at the front of the classroom, marking papers. Every so often she will look up to make sure you are doing what you are supposed to be doing, and your gut clenches with a different sort of shame that she expects – that she knows – that you are such a failure to merit such close inspections.

It takes a few hours that slide by you unnoticed, as time is difficult for you to keep, before you are finished copying the glossary. Your head hangs low as you slowly get up. She is watching you from the moment you began to move, and you fear that you might wince and alert her to your agonized side under that cat-like, level gaze. Once you get to her desk, you wait for her to say something.

"Mr. Malfoy."

It is good enough. You hold out the completed glossaries, not daring to look up. She takes them, but doesn't look at them. You follow her in your peripheral as she tosses all that work into her rubbish bin and flicks her wand. The papers are shredded. You feel something inside you shred along with them. She is speaking again but you can't hear; everything that you are and have is fixated on those tiny pieces of parchment that will rot and decay, despite all the effort you put into them. You had underlined, emphasized, paraphrased… everything. And yet now they were ripped up and useless. Completely, utterly useless.

"Mr. Malfoy, are you listening to me?"

The stern voice brings you back to yourself. You mumble something noncommittal and your gaze is once again on your shoes.

McGonagall is silent for a moment, and you can not feel what she is thinking. Then she does something unexpected.

Her hand reaches out towards your face and you are so taken by surprise that you wince and take a half-step back. Your body begins to tremble, but only slightly. You don't think she sees you shake. You can't believe she would slap you. You wait, terrified but resigned, for a blow that never comes. You open your eyes, curious, and stare as her hand, which had frozen, still in its reach, rests gently on your jaw. She turns your face to the side, and her features harden.

You realize, with a dread so encompassing it shakes the grey surrounding you into sharp focus, that she has seen the bruise, dark purple-yellow, stretching across your jaw from earlier.

"Mr. Malfoy, what has happened to your face?"

You curse yourself that you had forgotten. You had almost been late to detention and hadn't remembered to cover up the bruises.

"Fell," you whisper hoarsely, near-silently. It wasn't a lie – not a complete lie. You had fallen, tripped by a jinx. That was what started the whole thing.

She turns your head again and stares levelly at you. She doesn't believe you, but she only purses her lips. You deserved it, you whisper in your mind, half-hoping that she would hear your thoughts. Maybe she does, maybe she doesn't. Maybe she agrees, because she nods and says, "You may leave."

You nod and step away slowly, thinking maybe she would recant on hitting you. It was a stupid thought, for she only tidies her desk and moves to leave as well. As the door to her classroom closes behind you, you sink to the ground.

So stupid, so stupid. You're so stupid, so useless, so pathetic.

You jerk your head back to thud into the wall. You repeat this five times, repeating the mantra in your head the same amount. Finally, when the sharp grey begins to fade, you push yourself up. It is a long, cold walk back to the common room.


	5. Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

It is the fifth day meeting Them by the lake, and you've already fallen into routine. You finish your classes and follow the crowd into the Great Hall. You have your own place, now, at the end of the table, because you know even the first-years would hate to be near you, to be tainted by you, and so you try and try and try to please them, and stay where you've been placed. Glares are on your back, burning through you with a coldness that penetrates so deeply. No matter how routine, each one is a new wound.

You make the rouse of eating; you put food on your plate, generous amounts. Sometimes, you play with it, using a fork to push the contents back and forth across the blank canvass of white. Other times, you spend the entire evening staring at ash that you cannot bare to eat.

Then you slowly, achingly pull yourself up, moving hesitantly across the hall, through the corridors, until you go outside and head for the lake. With every passing day, the journey is harder to make. Your body is rebelling against you, constantly reminding you of aches that you deserved. You are always there earlier than Them. You do not want to make them angry.

Today is a Friday. It is the last day of your routine. You wonder (fear) what the weekend may bring. As they draw closer from behind, smirking and leering and hollering, you wonder if you'll even make it until then.

For the last four days, after this you would head straight to your detentions. But tonight is different; another deviation to the routine. You have no more detentions to own up to, no more glossaries to record or desks to polish of ingrained expletives. The deviation has your heart pounding, because you like knowing what is going to happen, you need to know what is going to happen – you can prepare, generalize, discount for what is going to happen.

You almost wish they would do away with you tonight.

A quick leg-locker curse is sent for you; all you do is bow your head and close your eyes against the assault. The kicks and punches, the laughs and spat insults… all of it spins into a collage of grey, swirling too fast for you to understand. There is a blow to your face that makes you curl into yourself, but a quick jab into the soft tissue of your back makes you arch with pain.

You're shaking and you don't know why.

There is an emptiness in you, a void that lusts to be filled. You don't know what to fill it with; you never have. It is the pit of your despair, the culmination of all of your failed efforts and childish whining. It is a vortex that sucks every once of warmth from your body and makes you tremble with it, even as it pumps out poisonous grey into your bloodstream, poisonous, toxic, useless grey.

Useless grey.

You have never done anything right. You're a failure, and this longing you feel is your punishment. Punishment that you justly deserve. No amount of physical damage could ever amount to the damage done within you.

Something deep inside suddenly shatters, and you go limp.

They keep at it for a few moments longer, before one of Them notices that you've broken. He sneers contempt, disgusted. You are so weak.

"Pathetic."

Coward.

"Filth."

You shatter a little more.

They are done with you, and like every time before, they pick you up and toss you into the Lake. Like every time before, you cannot tell which way is up, but panic is too far away for you to grasp this time. They haven't released the leg-locker curse, but it wouldn't matter even if they had. The shimmering surface of the water, that mesmerizing barrier between two worlds, slowly slips away from your reaching hand. You cannot find it within yourself to long for air; you've forgotten why you need it. You have no strength left within you to claw your way to life. Even as the black converges on your vision, you do not panic; you do not care. That, too, is knowledge from another life, the life beyond the surface. It is forgotten.

You close your eyes.

The only thing you know is that down here, in the depths of the lake, there is no grey.

There is only black.

And very soon, there will be green.

It is a hellish nightmare fast disappearing from your memories like grains of sand in an hourglass, nothing more than haunting images on the edge of your consciousness. You come back to yourself, and find you shivering, your heart pounding, your lungs bloody and throat raw with acid that is now churning in your chest. You are coughing, coughing so hard, and your hair is dripping into your eyes, so that the image kneeling over you is blurry at best, but does not stop you from recognizing your savior.

Cringing, you wrap your arms around your frail body, turning your eyes away. You do not care about how your cheek is digging into mud, or how, in your moment of unconsciousness, your glamour charms faded to reveal your swollen, ugly, bruise-addled face, or even how your robes, drenched as they are, cling to your pronounced ribs and broadcast to the world that you haven't eaten in a very long time. You only care that you had been so close to your eternal sleep (nightmare) and it was Ron Weasley that had prevented you from achieving it.

Your chest still burns and your throat, raw, prevents you from making a single noise, whimper or cry. Not that you would be able to discern it through the roaring in your ears.

Weasley's voice somehow makes it through. "Stay with me, Malfoy. I sent my Patronus – Harry and Hermione will be here in a second, all right? You gotta stay awake… dunno if you have a concussion or not, but with the way you look, I'd say it's a pretty good chance…"

Falling asleep with a brain injury is deadly, you remember hearing once. The water that is running off of your robes is freezing, ice-cold, like your skin, or maybe it's only one but it's all you can feel. Your eyes are closed, and you are so, so tired, and maybe sleeping will get rid of the acid bubbling inside you, erupting inside your chest, melting through your lungs and through your ribs, squeezing tightly to your heart. But Weasley's voice, so steady, prevents you from doing so and you realize quickly what exactly he is doing.

"Never thought I'd be here, no-no, but looks like everything's gotta change somewhat in a war. I was there, you know, when Harry killed You-Know-Who, and I was there that day your father was sentenced. Some of the happiest moments of my life, you know. You must be happy he's out of your life, eh? Now you've gotta chance at making a new reputation for the Malfoy line, eh? Certainly many Slytherins have… I mean just look at Snape. Hailed a hero! Who'd a thought it?"

You know he doesn't know the meaning of his words, but each uttered sound is a slash inside you. It further mauls whatever small shred is left of your sanity, and suddenly you wish for nothing else but death. But you are too weak, too failed, too cowardly… too broken, shattered, to do anything but shudder, curled up in the mud of the lake's shore.

Footprints, two sets, heavy on the wet earth, vibrate beneath your cheek in rapid succession and you hear her startled, horrified gasp. "Oh, no…"

"What happened?" demands Potter.

You quake to have them see you like this. Just a side show, a freak, a coward. Pathetic. Pathetic filth.

"I was flying," Weasley quickly explains. Only now do you realize he has a hand on your back, trying to be supportive, but to you, so fucking stupid, unnecessary, further reminding you of how close you had been to hell, which is a place you fear with every fiber of your being but know you will end up going there, as you deserve, and being pulled away from its banks will surely anger it, anger Them.

"I saw a group around the lake, but didn't think anything of it until I got closer. I saw one of them toss Malfoy into the lake and walk away, so I figured it was over… except Malfoy never surfaced. I dragged him out and Enerverated him, then called you guys. I can't believe they managed to corner him again."

You feel them kneel down, and gentle hands are prying at your jaw. Her fingers push into a bruise and your breath hitches as you cower from her touch.

Granger's fingers withdraw instantly, and she sucks in a breath. "How could this have happened?!"

"I gave him back his wand," Potter says quickly, almost defensively. Stupid Potter, you think. Always taking the blame, expecting the blame, when really you know it is all your fault.

"Draco," she murmurs to you. Your body feels heavy, and the pain is somewhat dulled. You cannot remember a time when you have felt so tired. "Draco, you've got to turn over, okay? We need to get you to the infirmary, alright?"

You don't move; you can't move. Their voices loop out of your hearing. The world lunges on its axis for one brief second, and leaves you sick with vertigo. The vortex inside you is tugging on that broken piece of soul deep within you. You wish it would just suck it in already, and stop tormenting you. Your body is limp.

A whispered spell once again brings you back to yourself, but this time you are facing the sky, which is surging and tumbling with dark, looming steel clouds. The mist from the weather is cold. You are too far gone to shiver.

There is a hand, soft and delightfully cool on your too-hot brow, slowly sweeping away your soaked bangs from your eyes. You blink sluggishly up at them, and find all three are leaning over you, looking quite worried. Your vision lists, not taking anything in, until it lands finally on a jagged, thin, zigzagging stripe of red standing out painfully against healthy, toned skin. It is all you can stare at as you hear Weasley whisper ferociously.

"How long were they beating him? What if I hadn't seen, eh? What would have happened then?"

Granger shakes her head, her wild hair moving with her. "No," she says softly. You blink slowly; where your vision is focused on the bright red scar hanging diligently over glittering green eyes, your ears are locked to the gloriously rich, golden tones of her voice. Her hand strokes your cheekbone, her touch feather-light. "Some of these bruises are old – up to a week ago, I'd say. What I'd like to know is how many times this has happened."

A streak of lightning forks through the sky above them, at the same time the acid churning in your chest bubbles and leaps up your throat. You cough, so weakly, as the following thunder smashes the quiet intensity of the night.

Granger leans back, away from you, and her voice is tight, ironed gold. "We need to go. If he doesn't die from drowning or injuries, he'll die from hypothermia for sure."

It is Potter that takes her place, Potter's hands that are inching under your broken body. Your vision fades as a broken rib presses up against injured lungs, but the only movement you have enough strength to make is to drop your jaw, emitting a silent moan. Potter sees. He always sees you in moments like these. (_'Cruc—' 'Sectumsempera!' ripping burning slashing_) You're so pathetic.

He cradles you carefully, and the scar makes a strange shape as he frowns.

"What, mate?" asks Weasley, who has seen.

Potter shifts you again, lightly; his frown increases. "He weighs nothing… He's way too light. It isn't natural."

You're not natural. Hear that? They agree. You're a freak. A cowardly failure of a freak.

They're walking now, taking it slowly, slowly. One step at a time. They talk as though you're not here, as though you're just some mutt they've taken in from the curb.

"Think about it, guys," Granger says slowly. She's thinking a mile a minute; you know that tone in her voice. "When was the last time you saw him even eat anything? I can't remember a time. I was hoping he was getting something from the kitchens, maybe, but it looks now like it isn't the case."

You bury your face in Potter's chest. His heart is thumping wildly, belying his calm gait. Your mind does not even process the notion that his heart is beating so quickly because he's worried. All you can think about is how you should have died, you should have just jumped off that cliff, not allowed someone else to push you. You deserved worse than death; your only hope in that moment was that it was supposed to have happened – that all those beatings, that this weak in hell-on-earth had been enough.

Now you realize why – why Weasley had to save you. It's because you haven't made up for your crimes yet. You haven't gotten everything that you deserve. You guess you haven't been hit enough, been kicked enough, been hexed enough, been scarred enough. That's why you weren't allowed to die.

You're so stupid. So pathetic. For a few moments, you had blamed Weasley for not letting you die. But now you know why. It's because you haven't been punished enough. You can't die until you are supposed to, until every sin is atoned for. You just fear a little at how much longer this will have to go on. How much longer will the grey have to blur your surroundings just so you can get through this piteous life?

Whatever vestiges of strength that you were using up until then to somehow stay alert fail you then. The sharp focus of the scar fades, and your body fades with it. For the third time that day, your body goes limp. Even as Potter stumbles and presses against something that shifts inside you that by any means shouldn't, you can't find the strength to tense up. Your vision is hazy, misted. The Golden Trio are but shadows in your eyes. The rushing is back inside your ears. You cannot see. You cannot hear. You wish you could not feel.

"Sorry," you hoarsely whisper. Your voice is picked up in the grey and lost. The grey once again begins to fade to black.


	6. Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Chapter Five

It is white. Nothing but blinding, scathing white. You barely manage to open your eyes, and sharp stabs of pain hammer through your eyes to the back of your skull. You cannot bear to open them much farther than a slit.

Your throat is packed with cotton, your tongue thick in your mouth. It is hard to swallow. It is hard to think. Everything is silent, or perhaps the ability to hear has failed you, although it is not rushing, roaring silence as it had been before. You cannot move, and your body aches at each tiny shift. You feel frail. Withered. Cold.

You are not too far gone to recognize where you are. It is the hospital wing. The three of them must have made it --

Memories assault you, like a physical force. The shame has never been so large, so heavy and solid in your chest. They saw you. Oh, God… they knew. What must they think? They must realize how pathetic you are… you bloody well fainted in Potter's arms!

Unnatural.

Unnatural.

Your chest seizes with pain and your eyes screw up. Fists you can't really feel clench in the white cotton sheets, and it is only then that you hear a close shuffling nearby. Pomfrey? Must be. You force your breathing to slow, your face to even out. But as she rounds the corner, peeking inside the curtains that surround your bed, she sees your clenched fists in the fabric of the cot. You hear her sharp intake of breath, and she swoops in towards you.

"Mr. Malfoy? Can you hear me?" she asks gently. Her voice is soft and gentle, so much like hers…

Her hand brushes away your gritty bangs, rests lightly on your brow. "Mr. Malfoy?"

You wonder how it is that her voice has as many tones as hers held… though not as powerful, they were still there. You can hear them, rich with worry and care; genuine care.

"Draco?"

The use of your first name shocks you out of your hiding, and you gasp with wonder and a bit of fear.

"Oh, Mr. Malfoy, thank goodness you're alright!" Pomfrey's face smoothes out, relief obvious on her aged, careworn features. "We thought we were going to lose you, child. If it hadn't been for those three, I'm sure we would have. Very close call, very close indeed. Are you feeling alright? Can I get anything for you?"

You blink wearily at her, hearing her words but not quite comprehending them. She is being so nice… the idea is so foreign to you. Your heart begins to beat faster as a frown of concern mars her brow, and fear of losing this strange, nice world fills you and you do not want to put her through any trouble. Though your neck aches with the movement and your head feels stuffed with more cotton, you manage to shake your head.

There was movement outside the curtain, and Pomfrey glances instinctually to the sound. It is the hustle and bustle of the hospital wing, the everyday expectations of the place where people end up when strange magic-related instances happen that children can't understand. It is a place of refuge, a place of healing. And what happens in there, though sometimes strange and curious, is all very regular for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

The nostalgia should have brought you some semblance of comfort, but instead a deep feeling of abandonment wells inside you. It gets worse as Pomfrey turns back towards you, her eyes decided.

"Well then, if you need anything, call for me, alright Mr. Malfoy?"

Without waiting for your answer, she is gone, ducked behind the curtain cutting you off from the rest of the world.

Because whether you are alive or dying or in pain or not, the world will still spin and Pomfrey will always have a case of boils to do away with, neon-coloured hair to return to normal, an enlarged head to reverse.

You barely exist.

--

This world of colour is strange to you, and you walk around half in a daze, half mesmerized by the vibrant and grey-less images that are forced upon you. There is no room in your over-sensitized mind to wonder when and why and how exactly you got your senses back, because all of your available thoughts are consumed by curiosity and amazement at the sights and sounds and smells and everything else that you can now take in and admire. You're back within the world of the living, and it is exhilarating!

The Great Hall is awash with brilliant, vivid hues. Even the cerulean and snow of the Hufflepuff banner strikes you as you enter what is by far the most alive room of all Hogwarts. The chatter of the people enthralls you, even though you do not hear what they are saying. The hum of contented people after the meals is warming. The drama and tears and laughs and jokes of everyone around you even begins to sooth that ache deep within you. It is wonderful!

Even so, you remain seated at the far corner when you dine, though dine you do. You had forgotten how magnificent food tastes. You have been in the hospital wing for a week, and so manage to reign in your satisfied groans of a man that had gone without sustenance for so long. Breakfast… breakfast. There's toast and ham and bacon and eggs and French toast and pancakes and it is all so good, melts in your mouth, mmmm…

You are sort of anxious about the rest of the day, as it is your first day back in class. You hope you pay attention this time around, make a decent climb back into your good grades. You know it is going to be a difficult task to accomplish; you have, in essence, missed three and a half weeks of school – even now you are amazed that you had slept for five days after That Day, but it is a sort of deflated surprise, because you consider that you had not slept since – since the Ki – since the last time you have seen your father.

But you are hopeful, because today has been a great day so far. You made it all the way from the hospital wing to the Great Hall with no mishaps. They didn't find you. You didn't run into the Three (soursourunnaturalsqueezeblurblack). The school population didn't really make much note of you returning to breakfast, most likely because you are sitting very close to the door and one would have to have had been staring quite hard at the entrance to notice you slip in. Yes. The day is going well.

The nervous giddiness is filling you and Pomfrey has warned you not to eat too much at first because it will make you sick, and so after a half of toast with marmalade you lean back, full and content. The warning bell is going to ring soon, and so you pick up your satchel and slip, unnoticed again, through the doors and head to your first class - History of Magic.

You arrive before everyone else, and take a seat in the far back, in the shadows so it will be difficult for anyone to see. You meticulously get out your parchment and quill and set up your station. Just as you set your ink on the corner of your desk do the other students begin to trickle in, and then soon after the bell rings and everyone is seated. Professor Binns enters blandly through the far wall, and his translucent, blank face surveys the students for a moment before he turns to the chalkboard and begins his lecture.

By the end, you are filled with pride, because you didn't so much as nod off once, though most of the other Slytherins you share this class have, and even a few of the lazier Ravenclaws.

The rest of the day passes in quite the same manner, though attention was brought unfavorably to you in Herbology, as Sprout asked you a question. You answered it dutifully, although only after the gasps of the students alerted finally to your presence died down. By third period, the whispers and rumours are flying, and by lunchtime everyone knows you are back in classes, even those first-year Hufflepuffs who have no idea who you are.

Such is the life of a boarding school.

Intelligently, you don't go into the Great Hall for lunch. Whispers would be rampant, and the glares would return. The Golden Trio would obviously stare, and They would also know where you are and be able to trail you, so that they can finish the job.

You know that your day of reckoning will come, and it will not be pleasant. But the day has been so good so far that you do not want to ruin it. You know this is selfish and stupid and disrespectful, but you want just this one day. Justthisoneday. Please.

But it is last period that frightens you the most. All of your other classes today have been with either Hufflepuffs or Ravenclaws. You also had Charms with the Gryffindors, but luckily the Three have it a different period. But you know for a fact that all three of them are in Potions with you last period, and your heart thuds in your throat for the unknown. Fort that is what they are to you, because what they say and what they do just don't make any sense.

They beat you at quidditch. They scored better than you. They had more friends. They cursed you and cut you. They spoke trash about you. They took your wand. They saved your life. They gave you your wand. Then they saved your life again.

It just – it didn't make any sense!

You are both relieved and deeply hurt that not a single one came to visit you while you were in the Hospital Wing. Once, you heard Her voice, whispering, and your heart began to pound within you from fear and something different entirely, but then Her voice carried and she was simply speaking to Pomfrey about a drought she had found that might work for curing chicken pox, which you already knew a young second-year in Gryffindor had come down with (two beds and a table over). She didn't even mention an iota of concern for you.

Despite your anxieties, or perhaps in spite of them, last period rolls around quite quickly. The stares and whispers that continued unceasingly through the previous few periods trail after you through halls and corridors, especially when you meet up with a throng of students headed to the dungeons. You only duck your head and allow a small, private smile, or more of a tightening of muscles on one side of your mouth because it can't really be called a smile, to grace your features. Hanging around back, you get to watch them try not to look back at you in wonder; the sight is strangely amusing, though you don't really know why. Perhaps it is simply that any first-year Slytherin would know how to properly scrutinize a person—

No. That way of thinking, that lying and cheating and cowardice and shame, was what got your father the Ki— the Ki— the Bad Thing in the first place.

Unconsciously, your smile slips off your face. You realize that your steps had slowed to a doddering trod at best, your shoes scuffed at the toes from dragging, and you have been left behind, so far away from everyone. Now the corridor you have walked so many times before haunts you, and creatures of frightening grey lurk where once were tapestries and suits of armor.

Little hairs on your arms rise with alarm as the shadow-creatures lurch and close in, and with a frightened gasp you stagger backwards, colliding into a wall with no give. Three – no, four of the creatures close in on every side, growling and slobbering and snarling, and you drop your back and drop to a crouch, your hands clenched over your ears and your eyelids clenched tight over your eyes, and you wish wish wish that you can't see them can't hear them can't feel them and—

"Hey!"

The voice shocks you with a whirlwind of blazing, vivid, intense green washing over you, and all at once the creatures disappear like shadows at a lit candle with only two uttered words, "_Finite incantantem_."

The little hairs on your arms deflate to blend in with the rest of your bleached skin, and you realize dreamily that the alarm had been magic, a hex cast you hadn't seen, a hex from behind maybe. You open your eyes and all resistance leaves your body, and you slump into the wall, your heart still beating in your ears.

"C'mon, Potter, we were only having a bit of fun."

"Well go have a bit of fun under a rock, Smith, because there sure as hell isn't a place for you and your idiots here."

"Buggering hell, Potter! You and Granger both - brains have been addled, I swear. This fucking scum has no place at Hogwarts, you'd think you two would be the two most supportive of a little payback—"

"—You're the scum here, Smith!" green eyes roared. "Now get your ugly trap out of my face before I hex it that way permanently!"

"What, ho, Potter! You'll get yours someday—"

The walls around them began to shake with the power exuding from a very angry boy – no, man, who had saved you from the dark, and a white spell shot off from the end of Harry's wand to chase Them far down the corridor until you couldn't hear Them anymore.

Potter stands, shaking, as fury rolls off him in waves. They die down slightly and he turns to you, but you flinch away from the raw power coiling in his eyes. He frowns at your movement and you cringe inwardly for it.

He ignores it, shrugs it off as you expect him to shrug you off – he's done his duty this week (wow, two in a row for you, huh?) and so there isn't much for him to do now, so he'd be best to just walk back to class and act as nothing happened…

Instead he crouches down next to you and gathers the books that spilled from your dropped satchel. "You alright, M—" he cuts himself off, looking self-chastised, and fumbles awkwardly for a moment, his mouth opening and closing opening and closing, until he looks away without saying anything. It still stings, though. You know what he was going to say, but at the moment you are staring at his vivid green eyes and lively brown book bag and, most importantly, the thriving red and gold of his uniform crest. You hear him breathing, you hear yourself breathing, you hear the mouse hiding in the suit of armor a few yards down breathing, and you close your eyes in exhilaration. You feel alive again, alive! You are alive! You did not think you would survive another meeting with Them and shudder to think what may have happened if you hadn't been saved.

"'M okay," you mumble, shrugging more than speaking. Your pulse is racing still.

Potter looks at you peculiarly for a moment, but offers a hand to you as he stands. You stare at it, probably for too long, chewing on your lip as hundreds of do's and don't's whip through your mind at light speed – he'll get it, he'll be tainted, grey, GREY, no hope, all lost, all grey and blurred and pathetic – but the shadows at the edges of your vision stay there, the grey is only on the ground, the sconces on the walls are brightly burning, and his vivid green eyes would never allow the taint into the Savior's life.

You take his hand, and you are pulled up. He walks towards last period Potions, but does not walk in front of you, like Father did to etch in your mind his superiority, does not walk behind you, like Snape did to watch your every move, but beside you, even carrying your work satchel.

It is long too late after the bell, and you know Slughorn will berate you, feed your mind with terrible images, but if Potter is this radiantly green, you wonder just how gloriously gold your Gold Girl will be, and suddenly Potions does not look so bad. Suddenly life does not look so bad.

"Sorry I didn't get there sooner," Potter is saying to you as you walk – sidebysidesidebyside!.

You're shaken from his conversation, and also, from his words, suspicion is curling tightly around you. You push that traitorous, cowardly feeling down, for it is wrong wrong wrong!

He flexed his shoulders, shifting your bag to a different shoulder. "Merlin, what do you have in here, bricks? Seriously, though. Zacharias Smith and his daft cronies took it too far. They keep taking it too far. It's okay, though. I'll have McGonagall look into some punishment for that back there – and for… last week. That was them, was it?"

Your throat is filled with cotton again. You struggle to swallow, but end up saying anyway, "Yeah. That was Them."

Now you feel like bashing your head in for your foolishness. If They are punished, They will get very, very mad, and when the time comes, you know They will enjoy dragging it out very, very much.

You reach the Potions classroom and unwittingly you draw in a breath. Potter hands you your satchel back, which you nod at him for, and then – unexpectedly – he puts his hand on your shoulder. You nearly jump out of your skin, but look over to see a muscle jumping in his jaw.

"It'll get better – Draco. I swear it will."

You nod reluctantly, doubtfully, but then you are walking into Potions twenty minutes late and you hold your breath to lessen the blow. Slughorn turns to the disruption, and you watch as disgusting, sappy hero-worship twists his face upon looking at Potter, and then his expression turns rapidly to disgust and shame once his eyes land on you.

"Twenty points from Slytherin for disrupting the lesson, Mr. Malfoy, and detention immediately after class today."

Gold girl leaps up from her desk with a hand slamming on her workstation. "Then that will also be twenty points from Gryffindor, Professor Slughorn, and detention for Mr. Potter as well!"

You take a step back, gobsmacked, as Slughorn's face turns puce with rage and he turns his head slowly towards Gold girl.

No, you think desperately. It was me! I was late! Green and Gold didn't do anything wrong! It was me me ME!

"Excuse me, Miss Granger?"

Gold girl's eyes are narrowed and glittering, and her hair grows frizzier with righteous anger. "It's Head Girl Granger, to you, Professor; and ask Headmistress McGonagall – I have the ability to take or reward points and assign detentions. As it turns out, Mr. Potter here was late as well, and so it is only due that he is treated exactly as Mr. Malfoy."

You glance worriedly in Potter's direction, but he is watching the scene unfold with lips thin with both bemusement and anger – anger directed at Slughorn, even.

Weasley suddenly stands up next to Granger, a decidedly fiery spark in his eye. "And as a prefect, I agree with Hermione. You have to treat Harry the same as Malfoy – or Malfoy the same as Potter."

His wording surprises you; you had no idea Red was witty with words.

Slughorn is thrown for a loop and looks wildly around the classroom, hoping for some sort of miracle to jump out at him. Finally, he exhales with a sharp laugh. "This is wasting entirely too much time. Boys, take your seats, and we'll continue the lesson."

And that's that. No punishment, nothing at all, except for shared, secret smiles shared between the Golden Trio at their undoubted victory; and, of course, the promise of gossip to spread like wildfire throughout the school.

Because the Golden Trio – Red, Gold, and Green – had just publicly defended you – you! And then they smiled.


	7. Chapter Six

Chapter Six

You stare at the paper with muted, far-off horror. You've frozen in place, a cup raised half-way to your lips. The Hall seems suddenly miles away and all you can hear, taste, feel, see is the headline. Colour flees from the tunnel of your gaze; you feel removed, deadened, and the school and its inhabitants seem non-existent. You simply cannot comprehend that there can be any normalcy left in the world, because your world has just collapsed and how can the world be normal if it has collapsed?

Lucius Malfoy Dead: Wife's Suicide Follows

Wife's. Your mother had always only been a follower to the world, a fragile, mindless, porcelain china doll that does what it's told and is incapable of its own thoughts; thus is not deserving of nothing other than the word that encompasses all that: wife. What would you be, then? Property?

Malfoy's Found Dead: All Property Disposed Of

Disposed Of.

So that's what you vow to do. Get disposed of.

They were your parents, you scream inside your head. Your lips are too numb to move. It isn't fair, it can't be fair – this, this isn't just. It can't be just. The only thing your mother was guilty of was loving too much. She loved your father too much. She loved you too much. And now, she couldn't love anymore. Those – those _bastards_ had taken her biggest love away, her husband and now – separated – they had both fallen.

You wonder how your father died. He had no soul, anymore; he could only just sit in his cell, a painted doll without the glittering eyes. Just dull, glassy, fragile. You wonder if maybe they had forgotten to feed him. Had he withered away to nothing? Had his body slowly eaten itself out, until he was all ribs and gaunt and death was a gift? Or had a disease ripped through him, seizing his chest quickly, stopping his heart where it laid in his body. Maybe the food had been poisoned, rancid. Perhaps a lone enemy with a vendetta against his father or the Malfoy's in their entirety, had ended his life. Maybe it was more than one – a huge group each taking turns to slide knives into pale skin, ripping and tearing, taking turns to pound metal boots into unresponsive ribs until they cracked, gushing blood from blue lips, cheekbones shattering, lungs collapsing, veins and arteries spewing forth their precious cargo of crimson liquid so that it spattered on walls and cloaked all the enemies in the crimson liquid, and his father was lying there, broken, until one last stomp of metal boots landed on his head, squishing it like a grape between two fingers, blood and blue-white matter weeping from the wound --

NO! You cannot think on this anymore. It would destroy you – forever, make you go mad and do something you'd regret.

_NO! You cannot do this to yourself, you will destroy everything they have made for you__…_

NO! You must, you must, it is time, and like so clear the water of the rain pounding on the castle roof, you know what you must do.

_NO! You will be betraying all their work! Hermione, Ron, Harry, they had saved you from yourself –_

NO! You will do this. You will not be saved again.

You race away from the prying eyes of the Great Hall, who even now have read their own morning papers, and were staring with narrowed eyes at you, to predict your reaction from the news. You have one goal and one goal in mind: you will die today, and meet your parents in death. Your life isn't worth living anymore.

You wanted to find a way to save him, to bring his soul back. But now his body is dead, and you have failed like ever before. It's all you'll ever be – a failure. This was the last time you failed your father, because this next act will not be failing. Really, you think it will be the only thing of any substance you've ever done with your life. You won't be a coward, this time. You'll get to the top of the Astronomy Tower and cast yourself away from the rungs, and then you will be free. Finally, that sweet embrace of death will be yours.

Hell or not, even nightmares are better than life.

Why hadn't They killed you when they still could? Why had Ron Weasley found you, to take you away from your peace? If you had drowned then, from the injuries, or never woken in the hospital, you would have been spared this knowledge of your family's death. It wasn't fair!

Or really, was it? All the things you've done, deserving of fates worse than death.

The realization settles on you like ice and you brace your face and run faster to your doom.

This was your punishment. To see your family gone, forever. This was why you hadn't died all those times before. This was your punishment. This was what you had been waiting for, in order to pass the veil.

Then it was your fault your parents were dead. The Fates had joined together to assure your punishment was done. If only you hadn't been deserving of every rotten thing you'd come across, if only you hadn't been cruel, if only you hadn't been pure evil wrapped in a silk façade, that even now was unraveling, sallow, pale, fading to nothing. Then your parents wouldn't have been killed to teach you a lesson. For your punishment to be inescapable.

It was all your fault.

Everything bad to ever happen to your parents – it was all your fault.

Even in death, you doubt you could escape that truth. But you hoped you would.

Or would their hating faces lie beyond the veil? Were you doomed to endure their voiceless accusations until the end of time? It would destroy you, you know. But it is none less than you deserved.

You break open the door to the highest tower of Hogwarts like a demon out of hell and you do not slow down as you speed toward the rail. If anything, you approach it faster, so fast you couldn't just be running, you must be flying and then you are – over the railing, flying for such a brief second that for just that second, all of it might have been worth it – and then you're falling, falling to your death, and you sit in death's embrace happily – until the pain hits.

Your arms are jerked from their sockets, your stomach ending up somewhere in your toes. Worst of all is the burn around your throat, cutting into you, suffocating you, and then you are wrenched upwards, so quickly – _funny, you'd always thought you'd be wrenched _down – and then you open eyes that you had clenched shut, and see you are still flying over the Hogwarts lands, not dead, not splat, but you are motionless save for the wrenching upwards by your cloak around your neck.

You're pulled over the railing, into arms like steel around your chest. The body behind you is breathing heavily, shuddering with fear and anger and distress. You hear an erratic heart pounding beneath your head and you feel it in time to the pounding in your own head. You have no energy left to move.

The body behind you shifts, making your head loll back on his shoulder with a solid thud. Your eyes are open, but you cannot see anything through the grey. Not even the striking green of his eyes, which you know would be there. Just – nothing. Everything is grey.

Something hot and cold is dripping down your neck, and with a sudden shock you realize it is your blood. Your cloak had ripped at you so suddenly from Harry's grab that it had cut into your flesh. If only it had cut deeper.

The haze of grey is slowly turning black. Your eyes list. Your mind is disconnected from your body.

Then Harry murmurs a spell and you are wrenched back to yourself, colour in full detail like the moment you woke in the Infirmary. It is staggering and you gasp.

You see just enough of Harry's hand to wince before his palm strikes your cheek in a cold, clear slap of pain.

"What were you _thinking_, Draco?"

You know. You don't answer.

"Did you honestly think that killing yourself would help you?!"

But you didn't kill yourself. You're still alive. Still! you ask the Fates. Still! Still you have not made up for your pitiful excuse for a life. You're a failure again. You can't even kill yourself properly.

"Don't think that!" Harry yells at you. His voice is fire, his arms remain steel.

You're too exhausted to move your head to look him in the eyes. You try to move your own gaze, but they cannot reach far enough. You wonder what he meant.

"You're not a bloody failure, Draco!"

You freeze up, your body tense.

Harry sighs, and the resistance leaves his body. He leans back on a wall. "I'm sorry, Draco. I know your thoughts. I know all of your thoughts."

You stop breathing.

"You were dying that day, after that asshole Smith got through with you. You died in my arms, Draco. You _died_. Hermione knew a spell – it would bind our minds together, a bit, give you some life from me. It's only temporary – Hermione created it herself, just a few months ago. When you were strong enough to survive by yourself, it would wear off. It did. I didn't let the mind connection, go, though. I'm sorry. I should have the moment you woke up, but I could hear your thoughts, so confused, I could feel your fear and trepidation and I wanted that to stop. I got Hermione and Ron to agree to watch out for you. They had no problem with it. We didn't want to see you die again, Draco. We didn't want to let you punish yourself anymore. We didn't want to see you waste away to nothing again."

"No, we didn't."

You start. Your mind is so caught up in Harry's words you never noticed Hermione and Ron sneak in through the open door. They're both flushed. They must not have known where you went and raced everywhere to find you. Your eyes linger on Ron, who is smiling crookedly, worry hidden beneath that smile. Then you look at Hermione, and she has tears running down her cheeks, even as strong as she is.

You're so, so sorry. She's crying because of you. Even now, you still hurt people, even when you don't intend to. You're just that hopeless.

"You're not hopeless," Harry murmurs into your hair. Hermione locks eyes with Harry. He speaks again, "He wants you."

You flinch. You hadn't been thinking that, had you? Maybe Harry knew your thoughts better than you did. Was that possible? How –

Hermione's face breaks a little more and she falls to her knees by your side. Tenderly, she pulls you away from Harry into a hug. You are stiff in her hands, not knowing what is happening!

"Let go," she breaths to you. "Just let go."

It's hard. But you do.

You sob into her robes, your fists clenching in the fabric. You cry harder than you ever have all before in your life. You feel everything letting go. Your guilt, your cowardice, your feeling of failing. All that exists, suddenly, is you and three others, all crying, sitting in a huddle on the highest tower of Hogwarts.

Crying because the past is unchangeable, because justice is never quite what it should be. Because suddenly they know they will never be the same.

You are changing. So are they.

You blink, rubbing your eyes, pulling your face away from soaked material. You look at each of their faces, smiling sadly, strongly. You feel yourself smiling with them.

Because even at the corner of your vision, at the farthest reach of your mind, there is no grey.

_fin_


End file.
